"This book consists of detailed commentaries on ten famous English poems from the Elizabethan period to the present. The specific works ... are: Donne's The Canonization, Shakespeare's Macbeth, Milton's L'allegro and Il penseroso, Herrick's Corinna's going a-Maying, Pope's The rape of the lock, Gray's Elegy written in a country churchyard, Wordsworth's Ode: intimations of immortality from Recollections of early childhood, Keat's Ode on a grecian urn, Tennyson's Tears, idle tears, Yeats's Among school children"--Cover
The language of paradox -- The naked babe and the cloak of manliness -- The light symbolism in "L'allegro-il penseroso" -- What does poetry communicate? -- The case of Miss Arabella Fermor -- Gray's storied urn -- Wordsworth and the paradox of the imagination -- Keats's sylvan historian: history without footnotes -- The motivation of Tennyson's weeper -- Yeats's great rooted blossomer -- The heresy of paraphrase